etiquette, superstition, ephemera

In doing some additional research for today’s post, I came across a cute story from about twenty years ago about a couple of high school sweethearts in Racine, WI who were finally getting married on Friday the 13th in order to break their bad luck. Their two previous attempts at marriage had been thwarted by bad circumstances, but this time they were attempting some sort of superstition overload in order to make things work: the ceremony started at the 13th hour, the wedding party was wearing black (13 bridesmaids, 13 groomsmen) and the guests all had to walk under a ladder to get into the reception. It was a cute story.

It was hard to tell, however, if they were just cherry-picking their bad luck in order to seem more dramatic. The bride admitted that she could make good things happen when she wiggled her nose, like make the cars start crashing at a boring demolition derby, and she had won a prize in a contest by playing her lucky number which included 13 in it. Perhaps most luckily, the future groom had been in a car accident ten years previous to the story, in which his steering wheel suddenly fell off and caused him to roll into a ditch and flip over several times, but he walked away from the crash. Also, he had convinced his pregnant bride-to-be not to get into the car at the last minute.

The story was so cute that I decided to see how the happy couple was doing twenty years on. It seems they are now divorced and their oldest child died at a rather young age. I don’t feel like posting a link to that part of the story because the whole thing was so dang sad. Here’s hoping things go better for the both of them, and let’s think about a nicer time when the bride could make cars crash with her nose.

ETIQUETTE: Demolition derby drivers are supposed to crash into their fellow drivers’ cars, but it is extremely poor form to ram into the driver side door. This is supposed to be fun and games, folks, not a source of injuries.

SUPERSTITION: Red cars don’t get in as many crashes as cars of other colors, and green cars get in the most crashes. Peanuts in the shell are not to be sold, brought to or eaten at car races (other than demolition derbies) because they cause terrible crashes. Shelled peanuts are fine.

Serial killers Aileen Wuornos and Richard Ramirez were both born on February 29th. But so were Gioachino Rossini, Dinah Shore, Jimmy Dorsey, and Ja Rule, so you probably shouldn’t be scared of people born on Leap Year Day unless you are melophobic.

ETIQUETTE: February 29th is well known as the day women may propose marriage to men in societies where this is not normally accepted. It is considered polite for a woman to provide the object of her affections fair warning in the form of bold attire (pants or a red petticoat) that a proposal is forthcoming. If the man declines the proposal, he must provide compensation for the slight. According to time and local custom, this remittance may take the form of cash, candy, a dress or twelve pairs of gloves.

SUPERSTITION: Your fava beans will grow backwards and your sheep will give you nothing but trouble during Leap Year. Also, your parents are probably going to die. It might be best to ignore the farm completely and look for baby whales, who are only born during Leap Year. Thank goodness for baby whales.

According to a New York Times interview with the artist of the painting above, Jack the black monkey was owned by an 18th century British ambassador to Italy. Jack’s owner noted in correspondence that he (Jack, not the ambassador) enjoyed enemas and grabbing the genitals of young boys. Perhaps it is no surprise that there are no companions at his bedside as he joins the choir invisible.

Start working on making your peace with the dying if you need to, let them wrap up their own loose ends, accept gifts they wish to bestow on you. Err on the side of making amends rather than expressing brutal honesty, but don’t say anything or make any promises that you would regret if the person weren’t dying. Sometimes people make amazing recoveries.

If you can’t think of anything to say to a dying person, just hold their hand.

Last year I wrote an etiquette & superstition post noting that if you were going to be a crank during Christmas, you should probably just stay home by yourself and not ruin everyone else’s fun. Sometimes you’re by yourself over the holidays through no cranky fault of your own, however. Treat yourself to some nice takeout or something and try to take it easy. It’s going to be okay.

ETIQUETTE: Miss Manners notes that questions from acquaintances such as, “What did you do for the holidays?” and “Did you have a nice Christmas?” are to be taken about as seriously as “How are you?” That is, not seriously at all. These are meaningless pleasantries. You don’t go into a litany of your financial, spiritual and physical woes with the grocery store clerk when you get a “How are you?” from them when they’re ringing you up, do you? (Please say no.)

So if you spent Christmas alone staring dead-eyed at the wall, this is not the time to share that information. You got through the day; why do you want to relive it, and above all, spread your horror to another person who was just trying to give you the verbal equivalent of a friendly wave? Get out of your brain for a moment. If you truly had the loneliest day of your life and need to unload, please take a friend aside at some time when you can really have a deep, two-sided conversation about what you experienced. If you don’t have a friend to talk to, feel free to write to me in a private message and I will listen. My email address is in the “About” section of this blog.

SUPERSTITION: If a single girl bangs on the door of the chicken coop really loudly on Christmas Eve and a rooster yells at her before a hen yells at her, she will be married before the end of the year. If she goes into the garden at midnight and plucks twelve leaves from the sage bush, she will be met by an apparition of her future husband.

If you really live in solitude and your only companions are ghosts, you will be alone on Christmas Eve because that is one night that ghosts never appear (sorry, Charles Dickens). If you were born on Christmas day, you will never see a ghost in your lifetime.

I did a search for “stabbing etiquette” online because I wasn’t finding anything in my standard etiquette books. Mostly all I found was “don’t stab,” so I guess you’re stuck listening to Uncle Kirby’s idiotic political arguments at the Thanksgiving table. A possible workaround would be you stabbing yourself when things get unbearable; I don’t think anybody would deny you excusing yourself at that point. Good luck.

ETIQUETTE: Perhaps another way to relieve some tension during dinner is finding something other than Uncle Kirby or yourself to stab. What ho – there is an enormous hunk of cooked meat right here at the dinner table. Perhaps you can take over bird carving duties if the host doesn’t have some particular pride about doing it.

SUPERSTITION: If you are sailing and need more wind, stick your knife into the mast. On land, stick a knife into the headboard of a cradle to protect the baby. While traveling in the woods, stick a knife into the door of any fairy house you happen to go inside; otherwise, they just might lock you in.

Thanksgiving dinner tends to have its share of things that you absolutely positively are going to be served whether you like them or not. Rather than falsely declare an allergy to a particular food item (please don’t do that), perhaps you could claim a phobia*. Examples:

Meleagrisphobia is the fear or turkeys. I believe it’s more a phobia of the live guys running around than of a giblet on your plate, but there is little chance that anybody at your table is going to know this.

No problem with the main course? Perhaps you have

potnonomicaphobia, which is a fear of potato products, particularly mashed potatoes. Please note that this is incredibly rare. Most people with a potato-related phobia tend to fear the eyes on old potatoes if a simple Google search is to be believed. Now that I’m thinking about that one, I might have it. I don’t think I can bear to even search to find a term for it. That’s… oh, why did I even find that? Ugh. Moving along.

Are you embracing your inner vampire and trying to avoid garlic? Declare yourself

alliumphobic and be done with it. Or perhaps you’re fine until the dessert course and for whatever reason you cannot bear to eat a slice of pumpkin pie.

Cucurbitophobia will get you out of your predicament far more quickly than a claim of gluten intolerance or sugar aversion ever will.

Perhaps the thing you know that is going to be served that you absolutely cannot swallow is Uncle Kirby’s avowal of love for all things Donald Trump. Just stay home, declare a sudden bout of

Allodoxaphobia (the fear of opinions), and order yourself a nice pizza or something.

I’m on jury duty again. I really, really want to make a different point of etiquette in relation to judges here, but sharing this point at this time could be construed as “discussing the trial prior to its conclusion,” so I’ll refrain from doing so. I reserve my right to send a cranky letter to the court at some point in the future, however.

ETIQUETTE: When speaking, you may directly address a judge either as “Your Honor” or “Judge (last name).” When referring to this judge while speaking to another person, you either say “His/Her Honor” or “Judge (last name).” When writing to a judge, you address the letter to “The Honorable (first name) (last name)” and use either “Sir” or “Madam” as the salutation.

Please note the above does not apply when you are speaking to a state or US supreme court judge. If you were to meet Ruth Bader Ginsburg for lunch, you would greet her by saying, “Good afternoon, Ms. Justice.” Ms. Justice may sound more like a superhero than a judge, but in the case of Justice Ginsburg, both descriptions apply so it should not seem awkward to address her thus.

SUPERSTITION: The judge will rule in your favor if you wear the eyes of a green plover on your shirtpocket. People with large mouths tend to judge others without properly weighing the evidence.

We’ve made our way to New Orleans. Primary stops today were the St. Roch Cemetery and the Voodoo Museum.

St. Roch has an area where people pray for healing of hearts and feet and eyes

and such,

show proof of past healings by offering braces and casts that are no longer needed,

and give thanks for the healing.

Pretty straightforward. I didn’t believe it, but it seemed innocuous enough. Throw a battery in the vestibule and maybe you won’t have to recharge your phone as much. Maybe, maybe not. Whatever.

A strange thing happened when I got to the Voodoo Museum, however.

I had a couple of dimes in my hand, ready to toss them someplace as an offering, when I got nervous.

Despite the helpful placards, I realized that I had no idea what any of this stuff really meant.

I knew there were some pretty bad spirits, and I had no idea who was who around here. Furthermore, I heard that the spirits weren’t too keen on penny offerings, so who was to say if a dime was going to be a good thing or a bad thing?

Ultimately, it didn’t seem like a thing I should be messing with if I had so little understanding.

I guess, for all my detached observances on this blog, I really am a superstitious person.

Or maybe I’ve just convinced myself of that because I’m a cheapskate who doesn’t want to throw away twenty cents.

I had been quite sure that forks in general had already been a topic of discussion here, but I guess I thought that because twelve or so posts discuss forks in relation to some other topic. All roads lead to forks, it seems.

ETIQUETTE: For Americans brought up on the “American style” of fork and knife usage, where one is expected to cut meat with the knife in the right hand and fork in the left, and then put the fork in the right hand and lay down the knife before eating the cut bit of meat, I have some good news: Amy Vanderbilt says that this bit of utensil juggling is absolutely not necessary. Actually, she said that it was not necessary at least as early as 1967. If you are like me, this means that you were taught an outdated and overly fussy way of handling your fork because your mother was probably trying to get you to slow down when you were eating. Good luck trying to break your dinosaur fork moves now, slob.

SUPERSTITION: Volondr/Wieland, smithy to the Norse/Teutonic Gods, made opals out of children’s eyes. Opals either cause one to go blind, improve one’s eyesight or make one invisible to others. Seems a little chancy. I might stick with being called vulgar.